Web Deploy Parameters, a first look

WebDeploy is a foundational technology for SIF, as well as Azure deployments and even Docker (where content packages need to be converted into web deploy packages to build images).  I recently did some digging into the basics of WebDeploy, including how to configure parameters in projects. This short walkthrough shows how to create a web deployment package form a project, how to publish it to an IIS site, and how to add and set a custom parameter.  We'll use this to set the "My Application" text in the MVC scaffold project in Visual Studio.  

Using Docker Playground to Run Solr

Recently, I wanted to run through some Solr documentation, and I wanted a clean Solr instance with demo contents. I was able to do this pretty cleanly on the Play with Docker site (requires a free Docker account).  

Here are the steps:

Go to Play with Docker: https://labs.play-with-docker.com/

Click Add New Instance.